I saw some data a few years ago that showed how many people it took to develop however many lines of code there were in WinXP. Then I extrapolated that to one of our company products which had about 1 million LOC and I figured we'd have to hire 40 new people to get the next version out. Somehow we did just fine with 8.

old_timer
Tuesday, July 20, 2004

<< I figured we'd have to hire 40 new people to get the next version out. Somehow we did just fine with 8>>

I hate to defend Microsoft. But there is a lot of difference between testing some code for your company with limited number of users and testing the same code to be used by a few hundred million people with varying languages, dialects, habits etc. etc..

None of that should be a surprise to anyone who has worked in a company that produces a shrinkwrapped app. Coders obviously have a coder-centric view of the business, because they have the luxury of holding that view. But it takes a tremendous level of effort to do anything release-worthy.